


lament for the dead

by vounoura



Series: knife wife and staff loser [10]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls Online
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, F/F, Grief/Mourning, me @ ZOS post-SS: friendship ended, run-on sentences for emotional effect, some minor alcohol abuse, welcome to the hurt zone kids I will be your guide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-09-24 14:17:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17102171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vounoura/pseuds/vounoura
Summary: It's another ordinary day, by all respects - the air is lukewarm on her skin, and the distinct scent of spring permeates the ground beneath her.It's a good day for a funeral.(Or: Veya's death, and everything after.)





	lament for the dead

**Author's Note:**

> y'all literally asked for this
> 
> also a side-character of mine gets involved in here and I completely forgot to introduce her in a different fic before I wrote this, so quickly: Gawaen is a Bosmeri werewolf and my canon non-Vestige AD hero. She and Nirasa are enemies-turned-friends and met/worked together in Coldharbour, and then later joined the Hew's Bane Thieves Guild together. They meet up again in Summerset by accident and are both involved in SS's main quest - Nirasa mostly handles the Psijic stuff, Gawaen's with Raz. 
> 
> Gawaen didn't participate in Nirasa's final fights against Nocturnal and/or Molag Bal, though.
> 
> You also need to know that Nirasa and the Mage's Guild jerry-rigged a not-cellphone like thing after Clockwork City that lets she and Naryu talk over long distances - though it doesn't work in areas like Artaeum or the Crystal Tower. This is important because the first few quests of SS differ from canon in Nirasa's case - instead of snooping around with Valsirenn, Nirasa is hauled off a ship as soon as she steps into Summerset, imprisoned, and nearly sacrificed to a Daedric Prince. Again. Because they have the damn not-cellphone Naryu gets a front-row seat to the trauma! 
> 
> ~~Summerset sucks guys~~

(The apex of the Crystal Tower is as silent as the dead.

Nirasa knows she is walking straight to her own execution, but what is another death, another Daedric Prince? Summerset has already taken everything from her.

Is she not the living ghost of a woman who should not be alive?)

* * *

She doesn't want to do it, she _doesn't want_ to, but she watches the blade pass through Veya (but that can't be Veya, it _can't_ \- it can't be, it can't, it's _impossible_ ) with a curious sense of detachment - like a lucid dream, but in the waking world. Her own body feels alien to her, unnatural, _strange;_ every thought feels as though she must pull it up from a pool of murky water first, from the very depths of an abyss.

Dawnbreaker ( _Darien_ , she wants to scream, but there isn't time for that now) is like a living sun in her hands (her? Are those her hands or someone else's?). The blade shakes despite herself.

The blade passes through Veya, but it doesn't feel like hers. The force required to pull the blade back (through flesh and bone and blood and sinew) registers vaguely in tight, corded muscle, but the hand splattered in ebon blood is stranger still. Those grey digits don't belong to her - they _can't_ , because she'd never raise a blade against something that screamed with Veya's voice again. She'd promised.

(But the blade is _hers_ , and her mind can't quite figure out what that means.)

* * *

(The blade is hers, and she's killed Veya.)

* * *

One second she’s collapsed beside what used to be Veya and in another Valsirenn is pulling her back, whispering something in a tone she thinks is supposed to be comforting but she cannot hear it. All she can see is the black blood on her hands and the way Veya’s body rapidly disappears with the fading gloom, and the panic boils so thickly in her throat that Valsirenn is thrown violently with the wild of it.

 _“Let me go!”_ She wails, desperately (that voice can't be hers, and she won't remember ever making that unholy, _unnatural_ noise), reaching out for her rapidly fading body because Veya can’t be dead, _cannot_ be dead, they’ve done this before and she’s just unconscious and Valsirenn will be able to heal her and everything will be fine just as it always is. She just wants to bring her back to Vvardenfell and let her heal, but Valsirenn is holding her back and not letting her _help_ her; she recognizes the pale light of a calm spell from Valsirenn’s hands a split second before it takes effect and hears an inhuman wail tear itself from some unknown place in her chest before the unnatural emptiness replaces the ragged grief.

 _You probably hate me,_ Veya says, sadly, and Nirasa pleads with her to stay, to come _back_ as Valsirenn drags her through a portal back to Artaeum.

* * *

(Valsirenn knows what it means when only one person still stands at the top of that tower.

 _“It wasn’t your fault,”_ She says, expression crumpling into something that mirrors the stone embedded into her chest. _“It will never, ever be your fault.”)_

* * *

Everything is business after that. There are dignitaries - sapiarchs, royals, ambassadors - to meet, plans to be discussed, congratulations to be held.

(The screams are only barely held behind her teeth, wild and furious and boiling with their fervor. _How_ **_dare_ ** _the world keep turning,_ they want to shout, to throw into the faces of the highest power she can possibly find, to anybody who can possibly hear her, _when Veya and Darien are dead? How can the sun still dare to shine when_ **_her_ ** _world has ended?)_

 _“There isn’t time to grieve,”_ Valsirenn had said, softly, expression tight and words clipped in a way Nirasa knows she’d recognize as barely-contained grief if her mind weren’t focused purely on her own. _“Not while there is still so much work to be done.”_

Nirasa wants to scream, to take her by the shoulders and shake her until she _understands._ Because Valsirenn _should_ understand, should explain to her why the world keeps moving around her, cold and unfeeling and unheeding of the way everything else has collapsed all around her. Valsirenn should explain why it is expected (time and time and time again) that she pick herself up from the ruins piling around her, around her feet in all directions and face the world like it doesn’t bother her, like the grief and the hurt and the missing presence of Veya and Darien in the world hasn’t torn a hole the size of her fist in her heart.

 _(But Valsirenn lost Leythen in there too,_ her mind reminds herself. _Entirely because you couldn’t save him. Because you made mistakes that got him killed.)_

It’s only when Gawaen pulls some strings to get her out of a meeting early, drags her by the collar to a quiet spot where nobody can hear anything that she finally allows herself to _scream_. To scream about the unfairness of it all, about how she never wanted to be swept up into two wars and about how the world should just _fucking_ leave her alone.

(Because isn't that what this is? Some divine punishment for some crime she hadn't known she committed? For not dying on that stupid _fucking_ table that Mannimarco threw her on? Isn't that the reason no deed of hers goes without punishment, why Veya and Darien and Leythen and everyone else around her has to die?)

It is only when her voice is all but gone that Gawaen finally stands, pulling her head down onto her shoulder (a slightly difficult task when you’re a Bosmer less than 5 heads tall and a Dunmer around six, but somehow she manages), digging her fingers into her shoulderblades.

 _“Why?”_ Nirasa asks, and Gawaen has no answer.

* * *

(Summerset hails her as a hero, but she feels like more of a failure.)

* * *

The next day has her schedule free. She spends it in bed.

Bottles of wine pile around her, but even without the haze of drunkenness she couldn't possibly begin to figure out how long she's been laying here, motionless.

(She'd thought the alcohol would make her forget, for a while.

She was wrong. It just makes everything else hurt more.)

There is a knock at the door. When Nirasa ignores it, it grows more insistent - the sound of the lock itself being manipulated is what finally drags her voice up from the forgotten depths of her throat. 

 _“I told you not to bother me.”_ She croaks, faintly, throat aching and dry. She didn't realize she was thirsty, and reaches with weak fingers for the wine bottle beside the bed. It fumbles in her grip and falls unbidden to the floor with a muted thump and Nirasa can’t bring herself to care about the wine spilling on the wood, about how it will stain or what it will cost her to compensate. She looks at it despite herself and the red looks like blood and suddenly she’s back at the Tower, wind roaring in her ears and the sun’s warmth burning in her hands.

(The alcohol will make her forget, won't it? Forget the blood and the inhuman laughter and the visions of the blade passing through a creature that spoke with Veya’s voice.

 _That wasn't Veya_ , she tries to tell herself, but it spoke with Veya's voice and screamed with her pain. _That wasn't Veya,_ she says, but the girl's blood runs in rivers over her fingers and drips steadily onto her boots below.)

 _“Even if it's me?”_ A painfully familiar voice says, and Nirasa feels her chest fill with ice. 

( _Not now,_ she pleads. _Not now, not now, not now._ A new sob tears its way out of her chest at the sound of Naryu's even voice.

 _Take care of Naryu,_ Veya says, and Nirasa whispers a thousand apologies for her failure.)

Naryu crosses into her vision, gently running her fingers through her hair, pulling it away from her face. She picks the fallen bottle up, placing a discarded towel over the mess, moves the countless other empty bottles out of the way, lights the thin candle on the nightstand with a hidden match. One knee, two, and then Naryu is curling herself around her - gently, as if she's afraid she’ll shatter if she’s too rough with her.

(Nirasa can't bear to look at her, to be around her. The guilt tears a ragged hole in her chest.

Veya is _dead,_ and it's her fault.)

Perhaps she simply knows not to say anything or maybe Nirasa's giving her too much credit, but Naryu is silent for what feels like forever - silent except for the occasional calming _shush,_ carding her fingers through her unwashed hair.

 _“I can’t watch you keep doing this to yourself,”_ she whispers, under her breath. Naryu’s voice shakes and Nirasa fears for one long moment that she _knows._

* * *

_(I don’t have to go, you know,_ Veya says, and it feels so real Nirasa begs her to stay.)

* * *

She has to get the words out - better to rip a bandage off quickly - but between a tongue that feels too big for her mouth and the weight in her chest the words tumble incoherently from her lips.

Naryu knows her well enough to put two-and-two together.

(Neither of them sleep that night.)

* * *

 (Veya is _dead_ because of her. Veya and Darien and Leythen and Iachesis. 

~~More voices, more whispers in the dark. Veya’s screams join the bloodied gurgling of Aera Earth-Turner, the howls of Iachesis as he’s torn apart and Varen as he’s ruined from within until they’re all one and the same.~~

~~Bleakrock. Veya. Coldharbour. Death, death, death.~~

A thousand different what-ifs play on repeat in her mind - _what if I had gone with her, what if I had kept a closer eye on her, what if I had talked to her more_ \- and then one moment she swears she can still smell the floral scent of her silver hair and the next she's crying uncontrollably into her knees again because the hurt is all she can feel.)

* * *

Naryu is gone by the next morning. Tong business, she says, but Naryu's also a woman who likes to be alone whenever faced with any sort of personal struggle.

The peace talks haven't even finished before Nirasa finds her own portal back to Morrowind - finding someone willing to do it is suspiciously easy, and she has a sneaking suspicion Razum-Dar had a hand in it.

( ~~A pair of hands pull at her, roughly, shoving her every-which-way, herding her like an animal to be caged. _No, no, no, no_ , she wants to scream, _the knife, the knife, the knife_ ; Mannimarco's features blend into a Daedra's and she doesn't know which is which.)~~

Vvardenfell’s ash-stricken shores greet her warmly and she should feel happy, feel _elated_ to be home, but the only emotion in her chest is numb emptiness. She spends her days halfway between dreaming and waking, the motions blending together into an unintelligible mess of hazy details that she cannot possibly begin to recall. She dresses in bold, brilliant red and bone white and ash grey but the symbol feels hollow and wrong; the glances cast her way when people think she isn’t looking shouldn’t be directed at her, and the robes feel unnatural and almost inhuman hanging off her frame.

(They've been fitted, but most days they still feel too small - suffocating, too-tight around the limbs and chest. Other days the garments seem to drag farther and farther behind her.)

It’s something about the colours that finally make the fact that Veya is _dead_ and _gone_ real and raw, and the undeniable truth spears her so violently through the chest that it makes her sick. She wants to tear the fabric off her body and burn it because trying to live with the lie is easier, but Veya and Darien both died in Summerset and there’s nothing she can do to take it back. There is nobody to beg to make things right.

(Veya cannot even return to her ancestors. Nocturnal stole even that from her.)

She feels the blood run over her fingers in rivers, staining her ruby vestments even deeper with crimson; she'd give anything for Akatosh to take pity just one more time, wishes more than anything that she could’ve gone back in time and did _better_.

* * *

(Her father had always said that it was better to live in the present than lament the past.

But what do you do when it’s the past that keeps coming back to haunt you?)

* * *

She is in the middle of pouring a cup of trama root tea - a few days later, when the only company she has within this tiny Balmoran inn room is the _thing_ within her marrow - when the _guilt_ hits her again harshly.

Maybe it’s something about the way she suddenly remembers how Veya liked trama root tea too but suddenly she’s back in Balmora, back in that tiny cellar of a safehouse, pouring a cup to help calm her because the scent of her own brother's body is still fresh on her senses. The tea swirls in the cup in its distinctive amber-brown colour and suddenly she can’t bear to look because all she sees is Veya staring back at her in the liquid’s reflection.

And then her hands are shaking and her vision is swimming and the cup falls to the floor, sending a million pieces of ceramic scattering in every direction and the noise sends her spiraling again because she remembers how Veya had dropped hers in her shaking grip when she had handed it to her and how the pieces had scattered on the floor in the same way.

 _I’ll clean it up,_ she wants to say, but there’s nobody left except her to tell not to step on the shards, to be careful and and relax and that _it’s alright, it’s not a big deal._ There’s nobody left but her to drink tea with because Veya was the only other one who liked the bitter taste of it and Naryu had made faces at them when she saw them drinking it.

 _There’s no one left to drink tea,_ she sobs, and it settles deep in her chest like a stone.

* * *

(She wants to beg. To beg to every god - whether living, Aedra, or Daedra - to bring her back, because the pain of knowing that she is _gone,_ gone forever to a place where Nirasa cannot reach her hurts more than the prospect of living, of _moving on_ without her.

 _You have a greater purpose,_ a voice whispers. Anger flares in her veins at the thought and suddenly she’s consumed with a need to light every candle she owns because the shadows lurking in the corners remind her too much of what Nocturnal took from her.

And yet the next second she suddenly wants to be engulfed in darkness no matter how much she hates it, because the light reminds her too much of Darien Gautier and his stupid, stupid face, of his short, wasted life and maybe, just maybe, if she lurked for long enough in the gloom she’d be closer to Veya and be closer to getting her back. Maybe if she stares at the shadows long enough she'll be ready to storm the Evergloam, to cross that inky boundary again and pull Veya through it like she pulled Darien through the Spiral Skein.

But she knows that cannot happen because Veya is _gone,_ and there’s no one left to drink tea with.

 _I never wanted to fight a war,_ she whispers, fingers clenching painfully - hard enough to bruise - in the skin of her arm, body shaking in an unidentifiable mix of rage and grief. _I just wanted her to live_.)

* * *

The Grazelands are beautiful this time of year - the air is lukewarm on her skin, and the distinct scent of spring permeates the ground beneath her. A breeze meanders lazily through countless stalks of wickwheat.

It's a good day for a funeral.

The marble ash-jar feels heavy in her hands, but the knowledge that the ashes inside are fake because there was no body to burn feels even heavier.

* * *

(Perhaps it’s selfish, but she wishes she had something _more;_ something that says _my name is Veya, and I was here._ Not even so much for her sake, but for Naryu’s.

(Naryu doesn’t talk much about family, her own or otherwise, and Nirasa doesn’t ask.)

But the Tower and Nocturnal took her body with it, and all that’s left of Veya’s life and legacy are the ragged notes resting heavily in the nightstand, bound in string and paper.)

* * *

Naryu spreads half on the wind. Not a Dunmeri custom, but it felt right, and Veya was never a very traditional mer to begin with.

(It had been Naryu who had suggested it, the words slipping out somewhere between the tears she’d tried to hide and the watery laughter bubbling from her lips.

 _“She’d love that,”_ Naryu had said, words soft and barely-there, _“She would’ve loved the idea of a final act of rebellion._ ” _)_

What is left is sealed tightly and placed with reverence in what amounts to the Virian family tomb; placed right beside her brother’s jar, beside an unfamiliar one that Naryu refuses to talk about and Nirasa has learned not to ask after.

(The Releths have their own tomb, but some part of her knows that Veya would never have wanted to be interred there.)

* * *

(She wants to honour Veya’s memory, do something _more_ than just spread fake ashes in the wind. She wants to remember Veya for who she _was,_ not for what she _did,_ but every time she thinks too hard she feels Veya’s accusatory gaze on the back of her neck and it overwhelms her with guilt and grief.

She wants to apologize - apologize for not being there, for not being _better_ but it feels dead and hollow, smothered by the ash and falling on deaf ears. It’s not healthy to still feel this raw this many months after someone is dead and gone, she knows, but a part of her died with Veya on that Tower and she’ll never get it back.)

* * *

(She doesn't know _what_ she's wishing for, exactly. Forgiveness? A chance to apologize? For Veya herself to say _it was your fault_ so that she can justify her metaphorical self-flagellation to herself?

The rational part of her mind knows that Veya was the unfortunate victim of circumstance and nothing else, like every other soldier and beast and threat that had ever crossed her blade or her staff. It knows that Veya was simply a girl swept up into a war unimaginably larger than she was, taken advantage of by forces she could not have possibly fought even if she weren't left hurt and vulnerable in those pivotal moments. That part of Nirasa's mind knows that Veya would have forgiven her, probably, and fights to lay the matter to a final rest - it knows that dragging out the pain and the guilt only does her memory a disservice, turns her life into something dark and corrupted and selfish.

 _(Veya never would have wanted you to hurt yourself like this_ , it soothes. _She is at peace, now. Lay her bones to rest.)_

But something dark gnaws at the edges of her being, ever-present and ever-hungry. It's the same beast that conjures ice in her fingertips even on warm days, the same one that that replays the sensation of a knife piercing her heart and her many, many other deaths over and over and over again. The beast breathes misery, settling deep into the marrow of her bones. _How can you even look at yourself,_ it drones. _How can you mourn one girl so deeply and selfishly when she is but one of the many lives you have taken? How many families have you broken?_

(She has no answer for it.)

 _You are a walking homicide,_ it laughs, a moment later. _A mass murderer, a living massacre._

The rational part of her mind begs to _forgive -_ not to forget, but to find peace and finally allow herself room to heal. _You have earned this rest,_ it pleads, _there is no need to continue to hopelessly chase the ghost of a girl,_ but -

But its voice is small and is easily lost beneath the din of meaningless noise and easily overwhelmed by the seductive whispers of the _thing_ settled into her marrow. It is silenced by the accusatory gaze Nirasa swears she feels boring into the back of her neck, standing the hairs there on end, lancing a shot of ice through her gut while riling the contents of her stomach.

(Always she checks, and always she asks. _Veya,_ she whispers into empty air, but as always there is nothing there.)

* * *

The months pass slowly.

Naryu doesn't ask about the Crystal Tower, about Veya, or about Summerset - but she's heard too much, seen too much, and Nirasa feels the _questions_ and the _accusations_ on the back of her neck when she isn't looking.

Naryu's known for a long while that something wasn't quite _right_ \- one night sleeping within the same vicinity of each other had cleared that up pretty quick - but they both had secrets they weren't willing to break between each other and were content to let the issue fade.

But Naryu was _there_ when Nirasa was shoved into that cage. Naryu was _there_ when her life was deemed forfeit (again) to a Daedric Prince. Naryu was _there_ to hear her relive the worst experience of her life, heard trauma after trauma after trauma drug up from the depths of her psyche -

She knows, on some level, that what she is doing is cruel and selfish. The dark thing in her bones laughs in glee.

 _You knew all along,_ it says.  _Don't pretend as if you're surprised that she's going to leave you, to hate you if she ever knows._

* * *

Naryu corners her, finally, one early morning.

She's looking at her with that hard edge in her eye she usually saves for people she intends to kill. It’s something cold and clinical and balanced on a knife’s edge, something that Nirasa's never had directed at her before and she tears her gaze away from hers before she hurts herself. Her fingernails dig painfully into the delicate skin of her forearm, twisting and pulling at the skin; whether or not she draws blood she doesn’t know, doesn’t care.

 _“What happened to you?”_ Naryu breathes, softly, gently, like she’s talking to a skittish animal rather than the woman she loves. _“I was -”_ Her voice catches on some unknown obstacle in her throat, tongue stumbling over her words. _“Every time. Every time you leave something happens and you come back broken and battered. Every single time I have to watch you fall apart because you cannot say no and then you won’t tell me what happened and I’m sick of it and now you tell me Veya's dead but you won't tell me how-”_ The words pour out of her, voice catching on something in her throat, and Nirasa wants to laugh because that kind of panic is so-unalike Naryu. Naryu doesn't _panic_ , and how worried she must be makes Nirasa ill because she's not - she's not someone worth being _worried_ over, being fussed over and thought about and cared for as she is. She doesn't deserve the pleading look in Naryu's gaze, not with the blood on her hands and the bodies at her feet and the danger that her very presence is an omen all on its own.

(She wants to say it. She wants to let go and tell Naryu everything and the words are _right there_ , behind her teeth, but they freeze to ice on her tongue.

What would she say? _Hi Naryu, you’ve fallen in love with probably the most fucked up mer on the entire continent? Hey Naryu, over half a decade ago I was kidnapped and murdered and had my soul torn out of my body? Hi Naryu, it feels like the world exists only to punish every action I take? Hey Naryu, I’ve died more times than I can count and walked too many Daedric planes and been forced into two wars I never wanted to fight in the first place and now I’m the murderer of your best friend?_

Naryu will never look at her the same if she knows. How would she, if she knew the blood on her hands and the dark things that lurk in the marrow of her bones, in the corners of her head? How would she, if she knew that Veya had _died_ because of her?)

 _“There’s nothing to say.”_ Is what she says instead, and oh, how the lie feels like poison on her tongue.

* * *

(Naryu _cannot_ know, no matter what it takes. Coldharbour and the Tower and everything in between are horrors that are her burden to bear.

Even if Naryu knows too much but not enough, even if Naryu had heard the lingering effects of torture pulled back to the forefront of her mind, she cannot know. She _can't._ )

* * *

Their interactions are limited to terse pleasantries after that, if they speak at all. Naryu sleeps in the Tong's bed more than she does their own.

(Nirasa doesn't chase her down. Not just because that's a surefire way to get a dagger in her gut, but also because Naryu's a woman who isolates when she's angry.)

 _"I'm leaving Vvardenfell,"_ Nirasa whispers into the crystal sitting warm on her lips two weeks later. _"For Murkmire. I'll keep in touch."_

There is no answer.

* * *

(Vvardenfell is too difficult right now.

Funny, how a homeland becomes poisoned when you know someone's ashes lie right below your feet.)

* * *

Nirasa doesn't see Naryu once in those two weeks - not in their shared room, not in Balmora's streets.

She searches faces as an Imperial-owned ship departs from Seyda Neen's modest port, but comes up with nothing.

* * *

(She tells Naryu she loves her every night, before she attempts sleeping despite the _things_ rolling around in her head, but never recieves an answer. The silence leaves her lost.

Two months later, when the muck of Murkmire fills her boot to the brim and she's lost the other to the mud and her new guar's run off and her staff keeps slipping out of her hands and she soaked through with the rain and she's so _frustrated_ and _angry_ (at what? The situation? The world? Herself?) will she finally hear Naryu's voice again.

 _"I love you,"_ It says, flat and quiet and emotional all the same. It brings her to a halt, and the surprise of it stills the thing in her marrow a moment. _"Stay safe."_ )

**Author's Note:**

> yeah so everything starts falling apart for Nirasa post-SS and its just great!!
> 
> I'm so sorry
> 
> (They'll get better I promise)


End file.
